WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will call on Monday for his chief trade adviser to investigate China’s intellectual property practices, website Politico reported, citing an unnamed administration official.
Trump had been expected to order a so-called Section 301 investigation under the 1974 Trade Act earlier this month, but action had been postponed as the White House pressed for China’s cooperation in reining in North Korea’s nuclear program.
Politico said it was not clear how much detail Trump would provide in his announcement, but that administration officials expected US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to open a section 301 probe.
Officials at the White House and US Trade Representative’s office were not immediately available for comment.
Trump has suggested he would go easier on China if it were more forceful in getting North Korea to rein in its nuclear weapons program.
While China joined in a unanimous UN Security Council decision to tighten economic sanctions on Pyongyang over its long-range missile tests, it is not clear whether Trump thinks Beijing is doing enough.
“We lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year on trade with China. They know how I feel,” he told reporters on Thursday. “If China helps us, I feel a lot different toward trade.”
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone on Friday night. They reiterated their mutual commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, the White House said in a statement.
“President Trump and President Xi agreed North Korea must stop its provocative and escalatory behavior,” the statement said.
The White House said the “relationship between the two presidents is an extremely close one, and will hopefully lead to a peaceful resolution of the North Korea problem.”
Trump will make a day trip to Washington, D.C., on Monday, briefly interrupting his 17-day August working vacation, a White House official said on Friday.
Politico said the investigation would not mean immediate sanctions, but could ultimately lead to steep tariffs on Chinese goods.
In addition to the United States, the European Union, Japan, Germany and Canada have all expressed concern about China’s behavior on intellectual property theft. The technology sector has been especially hard hit in IP disputes.
Trump’s threat to investigate China’s intellectual property and trade practices is valid, but his administration may not be up to the delicate task of carrying out a new China probe without sparking a damaging trade war, US business lobbyists said last week.
Trump to call for China IT trade probe on Monday -Politico
Trump to call for China IT trade probe on Monday -Politico
Russia says foreign forces in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’
- Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries
MOSCOW: Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, citing Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The ministry’s comment, one of many it said were in response to questions put to Lavrov, also praised US President Donald Trump’s efforts at working for a resolution of the war and said he understood the fundamental reasons behind the conflict.
“The deployment of military units, facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure of Western countries in Ukraine is unacceptable to us and will be regarded as foreign intervention posing a direct threat to Russia’s security,” the ministry said on its website.
It said Western countries — which have discussed a possible deployment to Ukraine to help secure any peace deal — had to understand “that all foreign military contingents, including German ones, if deployed in Ukraine, will become legitimate targets for the Russian Armed Forces.”
The United States has spearheaded efforts to hold talks aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine and a second three-sided meeting with Russian and Ukrainian representatives is to take place this week in the United Arab Emirates.
The issue of ceding internationally recognized Ukrainian territory to Russia remains a major stumbling block. Kyiv rejects Russian calls for it to give up all of its Donbas region, including territory Moscow’s forces have not captured.
Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries.
The ministry said Moscow valued the “purposeful efforts” of the Trump administration in working toward a resolution and understanding Russia’s long-running concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and its overtures to Ukraine.
It described Trump as “one of the few Western politicians who not only immediately refused to advance meaningless and destructive preconditions for starting a substantive dialogue with Moscow on the Ukrainian crisis, but also publicly spoke about its root causes.”
